Writers
of columns like these get a lot of hate mail. Apart from the letters that
are personally abusive, the most common criticism of this weekly missive is
my so-called anti-American stance. It seems that if you write anything
negative about America, you get branded.

So why do it? The answer is
simple: America matters. Politically, economically and culturally, the
United States is the paramount world influence.

Every day we, out here in
the colonies (of New Zealand), are affected by America. From the television
we watch, to the runaway films our creative community must make to stay
alive, to the rules that influence our food, medical and education systems
and standards, to the shoes we choose to wear and the coffee many of us
drink.

A number of letter-writers
have pointed to the good America does in the world. While there's no denying
that, often it's about how you arrange the figures on the page. Like the
fact (as one correspondent pointed out) that America is the largest giver of
aid in the world. Except he forgot to mention that US aid is tied to goods
and services, a practice that cripples developing countries and ensures
America is rated last on the international Commitment to Development Index.

America is a complex,
diverse and difficult-to-understand country. On one hand it is increasingly
defined by extreme security measures, while on the other it has given
virtually free reign to corporate hegemony. Tax cuts that have
overwhelmingly benefited the already wealthy have been at the direct expense
of health and education, while safeguards and protections for people and the
environment are being steadily dismantled.

Every column is an attempt
to explore a single strand of this multiplicity. Whether it is a comment on
the personal impact of a privatized healthcare system or the infantilizing
of children's playgrounds because of a litigious legal system that has
little to do with safety, or the outright denial of global warming to
coincide with the reduction of corporate responsibility for pollution, no
one column is definitive. It is simply a perspective.

At dinner late last year in
Los Angles, I got into an argument with an actor-turned-businessman who had
just shifted his furniture factory from Arkansas to China and was lamenting
the loss of the local film industry to cheaper countries, like New Zealand.
"New Zealand," he said petulantly, "is irrelevant. Only America has the
weight to count."

His hypocrisy aside, he's
right. Except that living as he does in his bubble of economic wellbeing,
he, like most Americans, doesn't have a clue about the country he was
calling irrelevant.

At the premiere of the New
Zealand film Perfect Strangers last weekend, Prime Minister Helen Clark gave
a short speech, then watched the movie with the rest of us. Afterwards she
wandered freely, chatting at length to anyone who wanted to speak with her.
She was not the star of the show, the room was not bursting with Secret
Service or hovering advisers, and there was no special fanfare for her.

She wandered over and
introduced herself to my husband, a new New Zealander. She wasn't in a hurry
and they discussed the film and the travails of traveling in a
security-obsessed world. They even talked about America.

Think about it. Where else
in the world would the head of state discuss anything, let alone politics,
with a stranger in a room full of people who had not been searched, screened
or vetted in any way?

This is what criticizing
America is about. Protecting the remarkable nature of this land that enables
our head of state to move freely among the people who elect her. It is for
freedom defined New Zealand-style. It's because we live in a freshly minted
country on the edge of the world and have the opportunity to learn from
history, to not replicate the policies favoring rich over the poor and
profit over common good that characterize America in the 21st century.

These columns are not
anti-American; they are an attempt to create dialogue, to raise
consciousness of the consequences of the globalizing, systemizing and
McDonald-izing of our culture and how US domestic and foreign policy affects
us all.

Unsurprisingly, most of the
disgruntled letter writers are either Americans living here or with business
connections in this country, or New Zealanders with business in the US. Take
from that what you will, but to them and others who disagree with the
contents of these columns, I have one comment -- question authority;
everything you see and hear that purports to be fact and everything you read
(including this column). It was the mantra my now adult daughters grew up
on. It is our only defence, individually and as a country, against the
creeping controls of the world's only remaining superpower.

And if you don't believe
the sometimes outrageous things I write, look for yourself. There's plenty
of choice.